There are few college degrees that pave the way to six figures. It can happen – but you can also earn a six-figure income without ever going to college. I’m aproud college dropout, and was earning over $ 200,000 a year as the head of SEO at Oversee.net while my friends were working on their degrees. I went on to build and run successful companies and help others grow theirs. And I’m certainly not an anomaly in the world of business success.

1. Online Learning Turns You Into an Expert

There was a time when going to college and securing a master’s was a ticket to big paychecks. But as we’ve learned during the ups and downs of our economy, a degree doesn’t always unlock doors to more opportunities.

You could end up needing an MBA for the work you want to do, but you should also stop to challenge your assumptions before signing up for four years of tuition and student debt. Do you really need a four-year degree to be a coder? Or could you take classes fromCodeacademyorDev Bootcampto learn web development? Chances are you can find courses online for anything you want to be an expert in. Consume every course and all the content you can find to advance your own career.

2. It’s Possible to Start Consulting Right Now

There is no degree required to become a consultant; and you also don’t need to be a foremost expert to launch your services. Work on identifying areas where you can solve someone else’s problems. Look at B2B services you can offer, from email marketing to on-site optimization.

Just don’t fall into the trap of believing that you don’t know enough to consult. If you know more than your clients and can coach them in useful ways that solve their problems, then you can look to consulting. I have years of experience in content marketing and consult entrepreneurs on how to grow their businesses. Although I’ve had a lot of success, there are plenty of other people out there who are more experienced and earn more than me. There’s room for people with various strengths and niches in any industry.

3. You Can Invest in Real Estate Without a Degree (or a Lot of Money)

There is no degree required to start investing in real estate. And I’m not just talking about flipping homes or buying rental property. You can start investing in commercial real estate without a degree or even much money.

Crowdsourcing has become a popular way to do this. Sites likeRealty Moguloffer investment opportunities for a few thousand dollars. Their properties range from hotels to office buildings to storage units. As you build up your portfolio and earn more money, you can look to commercial real estate opportunities in your own community to make a name for yourself.

4. There Are Still Plenty of Jobs That Pay Six Figures Without a 4-Year Degree

It’s really not necessary to go to college to earn six figures in this day and age. Adegree isn’t required for air traffic controllers, yet they have the opportunity to earn six figures within a few years. Real estate brokers and technical writers also don’t need degrees to work in their fields, yet they have high earning potential.

Think about what would happen if you didn’t have that loan payment. You could invest that $ 351 into your own business or self-learning to create the kind of career and income stream you’re looking for.

6. Your Degree Could Be Useless By the Time You Graduate

I’m not necessarily against college, but it is a risk. You’re putting a lot of time and money into a degree that may or may not be obsolete by the time you’re ready to use it.

However, even if the degree itself is still useful in opening some doors, it doesn’t mean you’re really ready for the job market. Technology and business processes and trends age quickly. It’s hard to keep up with changing trends when you’re stuck behind your textbooks for four years.

7. You Don’t Learn Grit in College

Grit isn’t learned from textbooks and taking tests. It’s learned from being out there in the world and struggling through challenges and figuring out how to make things work. Your own grit might be learned through launching a freelance career or startup, securing funding for your business or traveling the world and working remotely.

At the end of the day, you don’t need a degree to give you permission to succeed and earn big. While a degree may be useful to help grow your skills and make new connections, it is not a prerequisite to becoming a leader in your industry. Success is a mindset and the result of hard work – and it can absolutely be achieved without your learning credentials in hand.

Did you skip out on college and achieve big success? Let us know about your experience by leaving a response below:

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It’s at the center of the talent, the investment and the research, the center of the software and hardware industries — all key ecosystem components to build the robotics companies that need to rise to serve the world’s future.

But the event horizon to make that happen is something that needs to be considered in terms of decades, not the typical start-up timelines of a few months to a few years, according to Andra Keay. Keay is managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics, and one of the panelists in this upcoming webinar that will be shedding light on what businesses need to know now to take advantage of the evolution that’s reaching a tipping point.

“Robotics moves slowly but it’s been around a long time,” she says. “The industry has done a great job over the last 50 years of helping us to envision what uses we could make of robots and what that could mean to the quality of our life and our economy. Yet, few of those promises have yet been met.”

The problem, according to Keay is that our expectation of robotics has been inflated.

“We did it wrong. We’ve created this situation where we look at robots as humanoid,” Keay says. “There’s no way that robots have anything like the capability of a person. It’s just absolutely impossible in this century for a robot to replace a human in anything.”

That’s not to say that robotics technology isn’t already very much a part of our lives, or that now isn’t the right time for the industry to become more established and scale.

“Five years ago in the industry we said, OK, the time is right,” Keay says. “It’s clear that robotics is at a point where it’s time to move into new areas. Out of industry, out of research labs, into the service industry and into the home.”

Robotics technologies are well engrained in certain industries, like automotive. It’s just that, for the average person, it doesn’t feel like something that’s particularly close to home. For this reason, it’s easy for people to dismiss robotics as science fiction because it seems so far away and the tipping point moments so elusive.

Understanding what that future may actually look like comes back to understanding the technological and economic drivers that are making robotics peek right now.

Don’t miss out! Learn more about Andra Keay’s vision for the future of robotics by tuning-in for the webinar “How robotics will change everything, including your business.”

“In many cases it will be taking this ubiquitous connectivity that mobility computing delivers and making a gradual transition to products that are just that much more powerful and versatile,” Keay says. “It’s not going to be a disruption, but once in a while one of those devices will change in how we use it and that will lead to other changes. I think that, with time, robotics will account for the same kind of seismic shift that the internet and computers had in the 20th century.”

One popular belief is that the growth of robotic technology will inevitably equate to the loss of human jobs. But Keay says there is good reason to believe that the opposite will be true.

“Everywhere I look there are industries that have increased the number of robots that they employ. They’ve also increased the number of people that they employ,” she says. “An exciting vision of the future is that of the skilled mobile tradesperson. They’ll still drive a pickup or an SUV but instead of a leaf blower, or a power tool, they’re working with smarter tools that are used in applications to take care of robots.”

Keay sees a correlation between this future of robot builders and technicians and the opportunity to create small, regional pockets of highly-specialized, entrepreneurial manufacturers and service providers of a variety of stripes to support niche industrial and commercial requirements for robotic technology. “Robots increase the number of jobs that are needed and they also increase the productivity of a company that allow it to expand and create even more jobs,” she says. “That will create opportunities for a new class of entrepreneurs.”

Ultimately, the future of robotic technology means creating machines that augment, not replace, humans and socializing the idea that people can work with robots in an integrated fashion.

“Some of those fences are starting to come down as computing power and intelligent algorithms lead us to a better understanding of how people can work alongside robots,” Keay says. “To make a significant impact on our economy, we need to build a lot of robots because there are not that many out there today.”

“People need to build them and people need to maintain them and the only way we can do that is to create opportunities for the industry to grow in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.”

What you’ll learn:

The key consumer and commercial applications of robots and drones

The role robots will play in societies and economies

How smartphone technologies will pave the way to robotics’ future

How cognitive technologies will transform our lives and business

The foundation of many IoT applications in shaping the way to robotics